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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26057938">my heart, a spinning arrow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicole_writes/pseuds/nicole_writes'>nicole_writes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mentioned Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Mentioned Edelgard von Hresvelg, Mentioned Golden Deer Students (Fire Emblem), Post-Gronder Field, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Recruitment? In my Golden Deer fic?, The romance is very light but present</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:00:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26057938</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicole_writes/pseuds/nicole_writes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Battle at Gronder Field, Claude contemplates the path that has led here and the one that leads forward.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd &amp; Edelgard von Hresvelg &amp; Claude von Riegan, My Unit | Byleth &amp; Claude von Riegan, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>my heart, a spinning arrow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Had some thoughts. They weren't Sylvgrid, to everyone's surprise.</p><p>This mostly exists because Trix told me she wants to read GD written by me and this is absolutely not what she meant, but it's fine.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The fire in the Knight’s Hall is almost burnt to embers. Claude takes a drink from his flask and stares into the flickering orange glow. The flask is almost empty and he pauses, placing it down on the table in front of him as he leans forward, resting his arms on his knees. He stabs the poker into the fire, flipping the log and rejuvenating the fading flames. He places the power back down on the table in front of him and pushes his hands through his hair, exhaling slowly. </p><p>He’s wearing only a loose beige shirt and simple trousers. He had dropped his armour off with the smith after the battle and hasn’t returned to pick it up yet. He pulls his hands back and stares at the white scars on his wrists, palms, and fingertips. They seem to glow against the darkness of his skin. </p><p>Years of archery have given him rough calluses and more than a few of his scars are from simple mishandling of sharp arrows in battle. He still hasn’t rid his hands of their tremors completely even after years of watching his hand-fletched arrows sink into throats and arms and chests. He’s a master of finding the small gaps in armour, but he wishes he wasn’t. </p><p>This isn’t what he had intended when he had come to Fódlan. He had intended to bolster relationships with the Kingdom and the Empire and the Alliance using tricks and pretty words to knock down barriers and open the continent to the world. He had intended to strip away stereotypes and build a new, better world.</p><p>Now, instead, he has the blood of his old classmates on his hands. </p><p>Claude had hoped, futilely, that Dimitri might just stay dead after the Empire captured Fhirdiad. Of course, he could never be so lucky. </p><p>The chilling words Dimitri had shrieked a Gronder, a perfect pinnacle of a madman, still echo in Claude’s ears. Gronder had been kill or be killed and the way that Dimitri had advanced made that clear enough. He had advanced without mercy and cut down soldiers clothed in red and yellow without even flinching. Dimitri’s strength had been formidable and his army was relentless and Claude had known that he could not leave the Kingdom’s king to his own efforts. </p><p>It had taken four arrows to even slow Dimitri down and Claude knows, sitting in front of the fire now, that the only reason he’s still alive is because the rest of Dimitri’s classmates had not been as crazy as him. </p><p>Dimitri, wounded as he was, never made it to Edelgard before the Adrestian Emperor retreated. According to Hilda, he had certainly pursued her after the battle. Edelgard had at least been smart enough to retreat when she had been defeated, but Claude could not say the same for the King of Faerghus. </p><p>He still remembers the way that Edelgard had looked at him when he had flown over her, arrow knocked in Failnaught and aimed in her general direction. He had called her lovely and she had told him to leave. </p><p>Claude’s first shot had missed, but his second hadn’t. Only his practiced flight maneuvers had saved his life against her supernatural counter abilities. It had only taken two more shots, one imbued with the true power of his Relic, to send Edelgard on the retreat. </p><p>Claude had had the shot for the final blow, a perfect chink in her armour to bury his yellow-fletched arrow, but he couldn’t unsee Edelgard standing in the Cathedral during their time at the academy. She would stare angrily at the statue of Saint Seiros as if it was the cause of all of her problems. Claude doesn’t think she ever knew that he had followed her. </p><p>He understands her more than he wants to admit: her anger at the church, at the systems of Fodlan, even her methods to an extent. </p><p>In Almyra, conquest is the way of the world. Lords fight and kill for shreds of land and power and brothers and sisters turn on each other for the chance to rule. Claude understands war. It has shadowed him his whole life, but that does not mean that he agrees with Edelgard’s methods. </p><p>He does not agree with the fact that it means they must bear arms against people they had once considered friends. He does not agree with the fact that it means that it was <em>him</em>, not some Imperial soldier, who had put Dimitri out of his misery. He will take this secret to his grave if he has too. </p><p>Hilda knows because she saw him take the shot and she has covered for him. Hilda claims that it had been a sick twist of fate when Dimitri had pursued Edelgard that had brought the King of Faerghus to his unfortunate end. Her eyes study his face every time she repeats the lie. </p><p>Claude should have let him go and get cut down by the Imperial Army. Instead, in some twisted sense of pity and righteousness, it had been an arrow fired from Failnaught that found Dimitri’s throat and put an end to the mad prince. He sees it as a clean ending to an unfortunate life and a neat way to usher Fódlan to a new future.</p><p>That does not mean he does not regret it. </p><p>He had dropped Failnaught immediately after taking the shot, disgusted with himself, and only Hilda’s insistence that they draw back to the rest of the army had saved him from getting swarmed over by Imperial soldiers. She had carried the Relic almost all the way back to command for him when he had been unable to lay his hands on it. </p><p>The flames crack in front of him, drawing him back to the present, and Dimitri’s voice echoes in his head again. Claude wonders if Edelgard knows what he has done. He wonders if she would congratulate him or scorn him for his actions. She would have no right to do either, he reasons with himself. </p><p>Not with the way she had left Bernadetta and Petra to die. </p><p>Claude himself had never been particularly close to Bernadetta, but she was a quick and accurate shot, he had known that from archery competitions back at the academy. Unfortunately for Bernadetta, Edelgard had been content to leave her on the centre hill to draw fire. Raphael hadn’t even made it all the way to the centre hill before the Empire set it aflame. </p><p>Raphael had returned to base after the battle with a stony expression and a bloodied and burned body clutched in his arms. Leonie had helped him bury her and had reported to Claude later that her fatal injuries had come from the explosion, not any of the attacks from the Kingdom or Alliance. </p><p>Petra had been quick enough at least to dodge the explosion on the centre hill, but her evasion had placed her right in Claude’s path. His stomach twists and he digs his nails into his scalp as he recalls the shadow of his wyvern falling over the Brigid Princess. </p><p>She had taught him to climb trees five years ago and he had taught her to fly on a wyvern. She had not been afraid of him at that moment and it had only been the live or die instinct he had cultivated in himself since he was a child that had let him loose the arrow. </p><p>Petra had taken the blow and from him and Claude had had an opening to finish the job, but he had been unable to shoot again. He could only remember the laughs they had shared through his misadventures of falling out of trees and their honest discussion about nature and the nature of gods. She had pulled back, wounded and bleeding, with wild eyes filled with a fear that made him sick to his stomach even now. </p><p>Claude wants to yank his own hair out in his frustration. He has been trying to reduce the appearance of Almyrans as war-thirsty villains and he knows that having the princess of a foreign nation be afraid of him will not help with that fact when it comes time for him to claim the throne from his father. It will not help his Fódlan relations either for his friends to see him as the thoughtless killer he looked like. </p><p>Although, with the way this war keeps panning out, Claude sometimes wonders if he’ll have any friends left at all at the end of the war. The Golden Deer, once innocent and chaotic and fun, are splintering, shattered by the burdens of the heavy war they’ve been fighting for five years. Claude can see it in all of them: the bone-deep weariness that accompanies every swing of a weapon and every new scar earned. </p><p>His friends from the Kingdom are already gone. Gronder Field had seen to that. Annette, apparently, was lost in the five years of in-fighting between the Kingdom Loyalists and the Faerghus Dukedom. Ashe was burned in the fires of Ailell when he fell with House Rowe. Mercedes had fallen to Ignatz’s arrows at Gronder. Sylvain had buckled under the force of Lysithea’s magic. Felix had met his end by Leonie’s spear. </p><p>Claude had shot Ingrid out of the sky and left her for Hilda to finish off. </p><p>Dedue had vanished into the chaos of the battle, but Claude is not hopeful. One man, alone, who is anger-addled and revenge-filled does not stand a hope against the might of the Empire.</p><p>Claude lifts his head, dropping his hands to his lap and stares, dead-eyed at the flickering fire in front of him. The Kingdom will have died with Dimitri. If he fails now, stumbles at Edelgard’s doorstep, then the Alliance will follow the Kingdom down, as history has always dictated. </p><p>He drinks from his flask quickly enough that he nearly chokes on the burn of the liquor as he tosses it back. He has run the flask dry by now, drinking away the grief he tries to stave off with a well-timed joke or a sarcastic comment. He wonders if anyone sees through him. </p><p>Lorenz, maybe, at the worst of times, and Hilda, perhaps, at his best. </p><p>Claude has never been good at dealing with death. As a child, his mother told him story after story to desensitize him to the horrors of combat and the worlds that both of his ancestors originated from. It never worked. Instead, he found himself pitying both sides and grieving for people he had never met. His compassion had never been beaten out of him, as hard as some of his step-siblings may have tried. </p><p>Maybe that is why it hurts so much, even hours or days or weeks later, to know that old classmates have fallen and will fall. Maybe that’s why his hands are still sticky with Dimitri’s blood even though he had given the king a death that did not prolong his suffering. </p><p>He wants to kill Edelgard. He wants to bury an arrow in her heart and have her fall down dead and he wants the war to be over, but Claude is tired of fighting. He wants to find Rhea and ask her all the questions burning on his tongue, to know the truth of the Church of Seiros and the Relics and the Crest system and the eternally mysterious Professor who rose from the dead after five years of “sleeping”. </p><p>It’s as if he summons her, just by thinking of her. Her green hair, as faint as starlight, catches his eye from the corner of the hall where she stands, just inside the door as if she’s waiting for an invitation. </p><p>Claude leans back on the couch, trying to hide his weariness as he shoots her a smile. “Teach,” he says in greeting. </p><p>She steps closer. “Mind if I join you?”</p><p>“Depends on if you brought a drink,” he jokes. </p><p>He’s not serious, but the professor pulls her own flask from her belt and tosses it to him as she crosses the room. Claude fumbles, almost dropping it, but he calms his shaky hands by the time she reaches him and sinks into the couch next to him, staring into the fire in the same way that he had. </p><p>Claude unscrews the top on the flask and takes a swig. Her liquor is cheaper than his own and he resists the urge to wince as he drinks. He lowers the flask from his mouth and hands it off to her. She drinks easily, without even the twitch of her eyebrow. Claude barely catches the monogrammed ‘JE’ on the bottom of the flask while she drinks and he knows then why it is so easy for her. </p><p>“It’s strange to see you without your armour,” she comments quietly, staring at her hands where she clutches the flask. </p><p>He studies her face. As always, she is hard to read, but he can at least see the grief that is heavy in her expression. When they had met, she had been a blank slate. Now, he knows her well enough to see the edges of pain that she so desperately tries to conceal. </p><p>“It needs fixing. Figured there was no point in delaying when we need to start planning on how we’re going to hit Fort Merceus.”</p><p>“Tomorrow,” she says, cutting him off. </p><p>He blinks. “What?”</p><p>“We can start planning tomorrow,” she finishes. “I don’t want to think about fighting anymore tonight.”</p><p>“You know, Teach,” he says, “I never thought you’d be the one to tell me to stop working.”</p><p>She lifts her head, narrowing her eyes at him. “I drop by your room almost every day to tell you to get a reasonable amount of sleep.”</p><p>“And how much of that is completely hypocritical?” he counters easily. </p><p>She doesn’t rise to his jab and takes another drink from her father’s flask. They’re both silent for a moment as she swallows and slowly screws the squeaking cap back onto the top of the flask. She places it down on the table in front of them with a dull thud and picks up the fire poker. She pushes on one of the logs until it crumbles with a hiss and there’s a puff of smoke before the fire starts to fall apart, returning to embers. </p><p>“I should have killed her today,” the professor says without prompting.</p><p>Claude knows who she’s talking about. “I had the shot and I didn’t take it,” he confesses. </p><p>She looks at him, her green eyes glowing silver from the warm light of the fire. She looks almost ethereal in the orange glow. She is stunningly beautiful and always has been, but since her transformation after the Sealed Forest, there is something starkly otherworldly and unsettling about the way that she looks. </p><p>“I never would have asked you to,” she admits simply. </p><p>“Then don’t attempt to carry the burden of that by yourself,” he argues. </p><p>She shakes her head. “No, Claude, when we get to Enbarr, I will kill Edelgard myself.” </p><p>She draws the hunting dagger that is at her side at all times and flips it in her hand casually. The hilt is roughly bound in well-worn leather, but the blade is polished steel. She has carried the blade for as long as he has known her, but he has never once seen her use it. </p><p>“You don’t have to do that.”</p><p>“I want to.”</p><p>The three words are simple and chilling. Claude hesitates on his reply long enough that she sheaths her knife and drums her fingers over her leg like she is nervous. She does not look at him. He is unsure of how to tell her that he feels the same. That he felt the same when he killed Dimitri just hours earlier.</p><p>In the quiet moment that extends between them, there are so many things he wants to say to her. He wants to tell her about all of his doubts about the Church. He wants to confess his true upbringing. He wants to show her the faded healing scars on his hands and wrists and say which ones were his fault and which were the fault of others. </p><p>“Are you afraid of dying?” he asks instead. </p><p>“No,” she replies immediately. “At least, not usually.” She flexes the fingers of one hand and Claude swears that they sparkle with yellow light for a moment, but it is probably a trick of the lighting. </p><p>“I’m terrified of dying,” he admits. “There is so much left to be done and if I die, where does that leave any of this?”</p><p>She looks at him and he is taken aback by the warmth that lingers in her eyes. “I will not let you die.”</p><p>His lips twitch at the sentiment. It’s reassuring to hear from her, the woman who is a one-man army all on her own, but even she can’t stop what might happen in the coming days, especially with the plan that has been floating in his brain for several weeks. </p><p>“What would the goddess think of such words?” he asks, knowing full well that she knows he does not believe in the goddess like most of his former classmates do. </p><p>“I am inclined to believe I have the goddess on my side,” she says simply. </p><p>She is still looking at him and he does not doubt her. He never has. </p><p>“Alright then, Teach,” he says, nodding. “No dying for me.”</p><p>“Claude.”</p><p>She touches his wrist and his hand turns into her touch instinctively. Her thumb skitters over the skin on the underside of his wrist and up over the exposed part of his palm. She traces a bruise and a bump on his palm from a few bad draws on the field today and a knick on his thumb from the reigns of his wyvern. </p><p>She squeezes his hand and he feels her reassurance and her nervousness in the touch. This is not about the future of the nation: this is about the future of two young people who are just trying to survive. </p><p>“Byleth.”</p><p>He doesn’t often use her name, forgoing it for the sake of an affectionate and familiar nickname, but the moment calls for it. He tightens his own grip on her hand and nudges his knee against hers. He admires, for a moment, the dark of his skin against the fairness of hers and wonders what it would be like to hold her completely. </p><p>“We will be defined by this war as long as we are alive,” she points out, staring at their joined hands. “But we needn’t let it write the path to our future.”</p><p>“You lead,” he suggests. “I’ll follow.” When she frowns, he squeezes her hand. “I trust you.” </p><p>They don’t talk about Gronder Field or Fort Merceus or much of anything for the rest of the night, but when Byleth finally peels herself away to get some sleep, Claude feels the warmth of her hand linger in his and he can almost imagine a future filled with light instead of one darkened by war and memories of the dying screams of old friends. </p><p>It’s a reassuring thought. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Oh, I have also been bullied into getting Twitter by my mutuals, so I'm over there as @nicolewrites37 or just click <a href="https://twitter.com/nicolewrites37">Here</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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